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One size does not fit all, your counter makes sense.

FWIW, my personal observations after putting 80k miles on a BEV:

- Range: I haven't visited the White Mountains in Eastern CA yet because I haven't been able to confidently solve the charging situation. Otherwise, I've ranged from Mendocino to LA to Tahoe with no concerns.

- Acceleration: It's more the punch for me. It's just fun to hit the accelerator and be instantly thrust back into the seat. My 328i was awesome, drove it for 20 years. My BEV is more fun.

- Quiet: Music is important to me while driving. The very quiet ride enhances listening.

- Charging: I did pay ~$2,000 to put a 90 Amp drop into the garage. I'm paying 12 cents/KWh. The only time I need to use a charge station is on long drives.

- Long Service Intervals: It's not the time. It's the cost. By 80k miles on the BMW, I'd spent $5k on brakes, oils changes/tune ups, a radiator and thermostat. The BEV cost about $1k for a windshield. $0 for anything else. Thanks to regen braking, I've got 85% of my original brake pads left.

The range thing depends on your use case, and clearly it isn't going to suit you. I have a pretty long commute - 60-70 miles each day, but this is easily swallowed by an electric. Most people use their cars to commute and do errands in. We occasionally do a longer trip, and here in the UK, that would need planning to work around where the fast (>50kW) chargers are.

Smooth acceleration is more a comfort thing. I normally use a manual, but even with an automatic, you're probably used to the shifts and the loss of torque - it's more comfortable on your neck to not have this.

Re: quietness - I do an hour commute each way, and I've done it in cars that aren't sound proofed well - I've had my ears ringing slightly on arrival. However, above 50mph noise is more to do with tyres and wind than the engine. A quieter car means I can listen to the radio and my music without hurting my ears, and conversations in the car can be casual without me shouting.

To add to long service intervals - less things to go wrong. An electric engine is simple. Don't need to change oil, don't need to worry about a gearbox, don't worry about the exhaust going, or the clutch, or the timing belt, or the fuel injectors.

Your last point - car engines are less efficient than a power station at converting fossil fuels into energy. I don't know whether they produce less particulates (my guess would be they do as our country burns natural gas which is simpler than petrol/diesel), but they don't push it out into the faces of people walking, or the air intake of the car behind.

> "quiet ride" - I've never once in my life wished that the interior of my vehicle was quieter, this is such a superficial benefit to consider.

It's FAR from superficial. Go for a test drive in a luxury car. You'll notice that you can listening to the radio even at high speeds is much easier, taking calls, same, heck, even talking.

It's one of those things you only notice in reverse: if you've never had it, you don't know what you're missing, but once you've experienced, for sure you're going to hate going back.

Of course, you can get used to everything, some people don't even riding in a horse drawn carriage with solid wheels and no suspension :-p

> "quiet ride" - I've never once in my life wished that the interior of my vehicle was quieter, this is such a superficial benefit to consider.

This is for me the single biggest reason I will never go back to an ICE car, after driving a Model X for 4 years now. My wife drives a small petrol car (Renault Clio) and I hate the sound of the engine so much.

Do you have experience driving an electric car as a daily? Or just countering all arguments as an exercise?

Comparing a $100K+ luxury car to a econobox is really not a good point of reference. Compare similarly priced cars.

My 2018 Q5 is extremely quiet. When I drove an etron loaner, I noticed the artificial sound it makes, but it was otherwise quiet as well.

I have the same feeling in a Range Rover. It is not about wind noise, but the sound of a running ICE that annoys me.

Smooth acceleration is due to no gearing, which means no transmission. Which goes into the next point about maintenance. ICE cars are extremely complicated due to how they transmit power to the wheels. 90% of this is eliminated in electric cars because the motors are at the wheels.

And it's a lot easier to capture pollution at the source of centralized power generation vs hundreds of million of cars, but I am just stating the obvious here.

If anything, your "counter points" -- while acknowledging the tech isn't perfect, are actually making a strong argument for electric cars.

As far as gas vs electric infrastructure it's genuinely perplexing that someone would argue for the former over the latter. For one thing, electricity is a lot more useful than gas! It's also safer, easier and cheaper to transport.

It also exists basically everywhere, even if the current infrastructure is not up to spec, you can still charge an electric car with a regular outlet with no special considerations.

Every thing you are saying is a detraction is really just pointing out solutions that are still in the early stages, but absolutely will get here vs problems we have just accepted from ICE.

No discussion about EVs is complete without mentioning the batteries. They are extremely environmentally toxic, and get depleted with time. Not good.

From what I’ve read, its cheaper to recycle certain materials from old EV packs than it is to mine new material from the earth. If this is true and continues to be the case, it seems like one of those problems that will luckily solve itself because it is economical.

> 90% of this is eliminated in electric cars because the motors are at the wheels.

It's not common to put the motors in the wheels.

I'm actually curious about this. I imagine that we're not at that point, and for now electric motors are probably placed somewhere close to the axles, but soon I guess we'll have true 4-wheel drive?

As in, a smaller electric motor right next to the wheel?

Suspension technology has advanced lately, but AFAIK for good handling you still want to keep unsprung weight at a minimum.

> In general, if all you use your vehicle for are little trips around the area of a major city, then yeah you can make it work. If you actually use your vehicle as a vehicle, it still doesn't remotely make sense.

You had some pretty good points until this dismissive part. Believe it or not, but there are millions of people who don't ever need or want to travel more than 100 miles both ways. And don't really need a truck either.

Just because your use case isn't the same as theirs, you don't get to decide whether what they have is a "vehicle" or not.

> "lack of particles coming out the back" - As long as the electricity you power it with didn't come from a dirty source, like most are, sure.

The only power stations that are producing a bunch of particles similar to an ICE car are coal plants and even with Trump doing his whole "Trump digs coal" nonsense these plants didn't make any economic sense any more. They made less than a quarter of America's electricity in 2020 and that fraction has been falling for years.

Also, unlike your car exhaust, which is literally where your car is, the coal plant's exhaust is typically over 100 metres above the plant. It's still filthy, but at least it isn't, for example, right outside a primary school, or arm's length from a passing jogger.

It sounds like an ICE vehicle is the best fit for you, but also that your needs are quite unique. 99% of even SUV owners are never taking their vehicle backcountry anywhere. A dirt parking lot at a redwoods park an hour out is the most off grid they’ll ever get.

And the acceleration and quiet ride are nice. It’s just one of those things you don’t appreciate till you have for a while. Like backup cameras.

"on a backcountry trip in the desert ... strap on extra gallons of fuel" -- Since you are going into a desert, would a portable solar charger work in place of extra fuel? The downsize is that it is only usable in daylight and it might not be able to charge fast enough, but solar panel is not flammable like gasoline so safer. It is probably more realistic to have solar charging stations in desert, independent of electric grid; at least we don't have to run wires into desert just to charge cars.

Smooth acceleration will help prevent someone getting car sick. Similarly, absence of car exhaust helps, too.

It’s a challenge to get enough solar panel area to rely on for charging unless you were camping for a few days every few hundred miles or something. Someday I hope it’s viable but it’s really not a great solution right now compared to ICE.

If you have electricity at this remote location you can charge your vehicle from a standard 120 volt outlet and get something in the range of 30 miles a day. So if the nearest fast charge is around 150 miles away and you are going to spend a few days at your destination, you can make that trip today with an EV that has 200+ mile range like previously mentioned Audi. There are also Teslas today that have well over 300 miles of range and could make that trip even without the 120v destination charging.

FWIW, I've seen these really low charge rate numbers for 120V outlets repeated over and over, but in my experience, if you let it run at max continuous speed (12 amps), the Model Y generally gets 5 miles of charge per hour on a standard 120/15 amp household plug in the 20%-80% state of charge range. Not amazing if you need to charge the entire battery, but quite adequate for day-to-day.

How often do you go on long road trips? I'd imagine most people do their commute and stuff around town like groceries and grabbing a bite to eat with friends and maybe once or twice a year go somewhere that actually hits the range limit. And I'm betting that's mostly visiting family in another city rather than backcountry camping. And for that? Renting an ICE car would be a option.

Having to rent for even bimonthly trips would get old in a big hurry IMO. What probably will be a common scenario for couples is a small EV and a larger ICE/PHEV. I used to actually have a small two-seater with great gas mileage and a larger SUV. But the two-seater got old, I stopped commuting in general, and it just didn't make sense to keep a second vehicle.

You can use a petrol generator to charge your car for your super edge case that 99.99999% of us will never have to worry about

It's very common in non-urban areas of US West such as around huge National Forests to have very limited infrastructure. And it's not 0.00001% of the population that goes to places like that.

I suspect that there will be some substantial subset of users and use cases where PHEVs will make sense for a very long time.

Needing to strap gas to the roof of a vehicle because of lack of infrastructure is a common issue?

No. (Although some who are really into driving in remote areas do.) At least today, gas range is still longer. For my SUV, it's about 450 miles. And gas stations are certainly more common than fast charging EV stations.

The better measure is whether it is 0.00001% of trips? This argument is similar to me (a European) deciding not to buy a sedan because I can’t drive it through the Sahara desert. If I want to do that I’ll rent a fit for purpose car because I sure am not doing it often (or even twice in a decade).

If it's really really rare, it's one thing. If it's renting a car that won't be set up the way I like it and that I'm often not even supposed to drive on non-paved roads even once or twice a year, it's something else.

I think you’re missing the point. Maybe it’s worth it for you but if that is the case you’re in a niche of a niche.

Maybe I'm unusual but pretty much all my friends own vehicles that are setup for weekend recreational activities even if they don't happen every week.

Same same but there is zero chance that an electric car doesn't have sufficient range in Europe and I imagine also in the vast majority of the US.

With regard to smooth acceleration and quiet ride, it sounds like you’ve never actually driven an electric vehicle before, you should at least try it before offering your opinion about it